Fifty-five-year-old Iain is Prostate Cancer UK’s Director of Research and will join TV personality Jeff for two legs of his journey. Iain will be joined by his wife, Catriona, and two close friends for the challenge – and might even put himself through more pain.

He said: “I’ve set an initial target of £1,500 for the two walks but have promised Jeff that if I reach £2,500 I will do a third marathon walk with him from Northampton to Milton Keynes.

"I am looking forward to the challenge, and I’m delighted to be raising awareness and much needed money to help the fight against prostate cancer.

“Without that help I couldn’t do what I love best about being here - funding ground-breaking research projects that will really make that difference to men.

“Our strategy is quite simple: find out who is most at risk of the disease; find out how we can tell the difference between aggressive and non-aggressive prostate cancers at diagnosis and discover new and improved treatments for advanced prostate cancer.

“I took on this job knowing that, with decent funding, research can find those answers and improve the lives of men with prostate cancer and their families.”

Jeff said: “I deal in statistics – but the ones we are dealing with here are shocking.

“One man dies every hour from this disease, that’s six in the course of Soccer Saturday every week.

“One in eight men will get prostate cancer, that’s why I’ve signed up for the challenge.”